By Adam Boocher

Just a short post for now: This week we had a grad student discussion focused on support networks in math. Discussion ranged from the networks we form to solve homework problems to those that we use when looking for jobs and beyond. Fellow blogger Dan Erman had a great bit of advice saying that those times he’s taken a risk and sent an email or talked to a professor slightly outside of his area, have always turned out well.

What novel support networks have others come across in their departments?

by Andrew Obus

More specifically: “Talking to people about math at math conferences.”  This, of course, is a very good thing to do.  But it may not always come easily (at least, it does not for me).  So this will be more a “question post” than an “advice post.”

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Brie Finegold

If you’re old enough to hum the title of this entry to the tune of “Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego?” then you might be a graduate student….  Okay, so AAAS  stands for the “American Association for the Advancement of Science”, and every year this umbrella organization hosts a gigantic conference.  This year, I (a graduate student in mathematics) am attending as a blogger and writer for Section A, the mathematics section of the AAAS.  Each “section” of  AAAS sponsors or co-sponsors symposia that feature work done in its field that its members feel will be easily seen as relevant to other fields, policy-makers, educators, and/or the media.  On the whole, biology is the most well-represented field at the conference, but this year there is a lot of math going on.  So the answer to the title question is “Everywhere!”.  Tomorrow morning I’ll be attending a symposium on Mathematics used across many scales in Biology and in the afternoon I’ll learn about how math can help determine fairness in the political process.

So if you want to get the day-t0-day update on what’s going on and if you’d like to comment on what you’d like to see discussed in future symposia or what you think of the ideas being presented, check out my blog, Mathematically Speaking, which is linked to by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA).   Also I would love to know if there are any other math graduate students in attendance at the meeting — let’s meet up!

The Learning Master has named the AMS Graduate Student Blog as one of the “Top 50 Blogs by Graduate Students.”

by Brian Katz

I just saw this beautiful BBC documentary about Chaos, and I would highly recommend it. They attempt to reconcile patterns in nature, chaos, and possibilities for self-organization. It’s a really nice history of recent mathematical ideas including interviews with people like Ian Stewart. Of course, they could be a little more careful with their terms and it would be excellent, but it is accessible to a huge audience, and it is very well done. I don’t know how long it will be up on you-tube, so check it out soon.

Secret Life of Chaos